Kara Keeling is Assistant Professor of Critical Studies in the School of Cinematic Arts and of African American Studies in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at The University of Southern California. Keeling is author of The Witchs Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense (Perverse Modernities)
Her research has focused on African American film, representations of race, sexuality, and gender in cinema, critical theory, and cultural studies. Her current research involves issues of temporality, media and black and queer cultural politics; Afrofuturism; digital media, globalization, and difference; and Gilles Deleuze and liberation theory. Keeling currently is writing a book tentatively entitled Queer Times, Black Futures, which will be published by New York University Press and working on a book project about digital media and social movements. Her book, The Witchs Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense (Perverse Modernities)
Prior to joining the faculty at USC, Keeling worked as an assistant professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), an adjunct assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at Duke University, and a visiting assistant professor of Art and Africana Studies at Williams College. At UNC, she was a Spray-Randleigh Fellow and a Fellow at the Institute for Arts and Humanities. She also held a Carolina Postdoctoral Fellowship for two years after graduating with a PhD in Critical and Cultural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh’s Film Studies Program in the Department of English.
In the summer of 2005, Keeling participated in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on African Cinema in Dakar, Senegal. She currently serves as an Elected Representative to the Modern Language Association’s Division on Film and on the editorial boards of the journals Cultural Studies and American Quarterly, where she is a managing editor.
Selected Publications
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Books
The Witchs Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense (Perverse Modernities)
Wrote Introduction to and Co-Edited (with Colin MacCabe and Cornel West) James A. Snead. Racist Traces and Other Writing: European Pedigrees/ African Contagions (Language, Discourse, Society)
Book Chapters
“‘Joining the Lesbians”: Cinematic Regimes of Black Lesbian Visibility,” in Eds. Mae G. Henderson and E. Patrick Johnson, Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology
“‘We Got Next’: The WNBA Advertising Campaign’s Negotiations with Femininity,” in Eds. Meta Carstarphen and Susan Zavoina, Sexual Rhetoric: Media Perspectives on Sexuality, Gender, and Identity (Contributions to the Study of Mass Media and Communications)
Journal Articles
“Looking for M–: Queer Temporality, Black Political Possibility, and Poetry from the Future,” GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, Vol 15, No 4, 2009.
“Queer Film and Media Pedagogy ,” GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2006; 117-134. (Invited Discussant.)
“Passing for Human: Bamboozled’s Digital Humanism,” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory (Special Issue on Passing). Issue 29, 15:1: 2005; 237-251.
(Invited Article.)”‘Ghetto Heaven’: Set It Off and the Valorization of Black Lesbian Butch-Femme,” The Black Scholar. Special Issue on Black Film and Culture, Spring 2003, Vol. 22, No. 1, 33-46.
“‘In the Interval’: Frantz Fanon and the ‘Problems’ of Visual Representation,” Qui Parle, Spring/ Summer 2003, Vol. 13, No. 2; 91-117.
“‘A Homegrown Revolutionary’?: Tupac Shakur and the Legacy of the Black Panther Party, The Black Scholar, Spring/ Summer 1999, Vol. 29, No. 2-3, 59-63.
